Now, on to the screen: a sensor switches the gadget between portrait and landscape modes when you rotate the phone accordingly.

The sensor, however, is not sensitive enough. At times, the phone stays in landscape mode even when you have already turned the device to a vertical position.

Browsing the Internet on the Satio was a pleasant experience: websites load quickly on both 3G and Wi-Fi connections.

Zooming in on Web pages, which requires double-tapping on the touchscreen, is a hit-and-miss affair.

The touchscreen does not recognise my double-taps most of the time and I find myself using the onscreen zoom button to zero in on Web pages.

Preinstalled applications are aplenty.

From RoadSync, which lets you hook up to a corporate Microsoft Exchange mailbox, to the Quickoffice mobile office productivity suite to even a Sudoku game, there is bound to be something fun or useful.

Like most other Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, the music quality of the Satio is unparalleled, with sufficient bass and detail reproduced from MP3 sound tracks.

For a flagship model, however, it is disappointing that Sony Ericsson did not include a 3.5mm headphone jack that allows me to hook this phone up to my own sound buds.

A feature-packed phone like the Satio naturally consumes more battery power. The phone went flat after a full day of text messaging, voice calls, Internet browsing over Wi-Fi and streaming a handful of YouTube videos.

Final say

While the Satio has oodles of features and an excellent camera to boot, user interface kinks need to be addressed.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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